I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS (15)

Colourful con caper may really have happened, but it fails to convince as a love story

JIM Carrey and Ewan McGregor star in this apparently true story of conman Steven Russell and the love of his life, Phillip Morris, which has been brought to the screen as a breezy and colourful comedy.

After some largely irrelevant detail about Steven (Carrey) being rejected by his birth mother, we learn that he’s a happily married policeman and family man. After a serious car accident, he quits his job and announces that he’s gay, leaving his wife and family for a new life in Florida.

But it’s an expensive lifestyle and he’s forced to become a con artist in order to fund it, which eventually lands him in prison when the law catches up with him. This is where he meets Phillip Morris (McGregor) and romance quickly blossoms between the pair.

Steven is released but Phillip is still inside, leading Steven to pose as a lawyer to get Phillip out. Remarkably, he’s then able to get a job as the CEO of a major company, allowing him to commit further massive fraud to fund their life together.

“This really happened. It really did,” is the film’s opening gambit, but while it’s all rather fanciful it’s still somehow strangely tedious, and with lots of text at the end to explain what happened to the characters, essentially pointless.

The main problem is that while it finds moderate success as a con caper, it utterly fails to convince as a love story, due mainly to the fact that Phillip Morris has no personality to speak of.

He’s barely a character, but the blame for this can’t really be placed on McGregor, although he doesn’t do very much to enliven him.

Carrey camps it up and whatever entertainment value there is comes solely from his typically flamboyant performance, one that combines his trademark gurning with some genuine empathy.

To the film’s credit, it is mildly subversive at points, with wild shifts in tone that take it from a fluffy comedy through some serious handbrake turns, before finding its way back to comedy again. Just don’t go looking for too many laughs along the way.

Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa

Running time: 97mins

HAPPY EVER AFTERS (15)

No-one behaves rationally for a moment

Single mother Maura (Sally Hawkins) is facing eviction and, desperate for money, marries an African threatened with deportation.

At the reception, a double booking forces her together with Freddie (Tom Riley), who is marrying the same woman for the second time.

What looks for a little while like being a breezy Irish comedy quickly hits the skids, throwing up a lot of sitcom standard misunderstandings and lame scenarios.

No-one behaves rationally for a moment, and characters are either irritating or idiotic. Freddie’s main characteristic seems to be an uncanny ability to get injured, as the film’s many daft pratfalls demonstrate.

You can tell from the title where it’s headed and even the wonderful Sally Hawkins can’t save it.

Director: Stephen Burke

Running time: 101mins

OLD DOGS (PG)

A hideous screeching catastrophe

Formerly respected actors John Travolta and Robin Williams befoul their lowering reputations further than you may have thought possible here, starring as old friends whose successful business partnership is thrown into disarray with the arrival of Williams’ seven-year-old twins, whom he must look after while putting together a major deal.

You’ll be watching through your fingers at the horrors of this nonsense, full of contrived sequences that bear little relation to each other, from tanning booth mishaps and medication mix-ups to a scene where Williams puts on a suit that allows Travolta to control his actions that will render you speechless.

Both stars mug desperately, making for a hideous screeching catastrophe that goes beyond mere embarrassment to enamel stripping levels of humiliation.

Director: Walt Becker

Running time: 88 mins

THE SPY NEXT DOOR (PG)

Jackie Chan only shows a trace of the old magic

Opening with footage from Jackie Chan’s greatest movies is not the ideal introduction to The Spy Next Door, serving only to alienate his fans and confuse the target audience of youngsters who’ll have no idea who he is or what he’s really capable of, or at least was 25 years ago.

These days, at 55, he’s making family comedies like this, playing a spy living undercover in suburbia and dating his next door neighbour, facing more danger from her three unruly children than the Russian baddies he’s chasing.

There’s a trace of the old magic and charm in among the overused wirework, and Jackie is still nimble enough, but having him speak at length in English is not playing to his strengths.

But thankfully it’s nowhere near as noxious as some of his recent American films, and while pretty tepid stuff, it’s mostly harmless.

Director: Brian Levant

Running time: 94mins

THE SCOUTING BOOK FOR BOYS (15)

Natural performances, but too melodramantic

Young Thomas Turgoose builds on the promise he showed in This Is England, playing a very different character here in David, a teenager living at a holiday camp with an unreciprocated love for his best friend Emily (Holly Grainger).

Turgoose is more than matched by the superb Grainger, and it’s the naturalism of their performances combined with the beautiful photography that compensates for a thin story wherein David hides Emily in a cave so that she won’t be sent away to live with her father.

The relationship between the pair is strongly sketched, as is the anti-glamour of the British seaside, and it improves significantly the longer it goes on as the decisions David makes escalate the situation, before dipping badly again with some late melodrama.

Director: Tom Harper

Running time: 93mins